North Carolina Banking Bill Passes with New Requirements
The general assembly of North Carolina has officially and unanimously ratified House Bill 86, on June 14, 2018. This adds new language to the state’s permissible investments and statutory trust under the Money Transmitters Act. The revised edition of the bill includes legal definitions about virtual currencies like bitcoin and other tokens. Also, North Carolina requires the licensure of businesses that deal with cryptocurrency activities. The state’s Commissioner of Banks Ray Grace can as well request data from the licensed cryptocurrency anytime. North Carolina house bill 86 states: “If the licensee possesses virtual currency as permissible investments under this Article, the Commissioner may at any time request that the licensee verify, in a manner acceptable to the Commissioner, aggregate virtual currency transmission obligations outstanding and virtual currency held as permissible investments, including virtual currency stored offline.”
The revised edition of the law which included virtual currency definitions and license requirements was written with the help of commissioner Grace. The Coinbase firm reacted positively to the passage of the House bill 86 and formally thanked the banking commissioner, representatives Tim Moore, Dan Bishop, Jon Hardister, Bill Rabon, Stephan Ross, Jason Saine and Jeff Tarte for boosting the legislation.
The Chief Legal and Compliance Officer at Coinbase, Mike Lempres said last Thursday: “Passage of House Bill 86 exemplifies how regulators and legislators can work together to foster innovation by either licensing cryptocurrency money transmissions or exempting cryptocurrency from money transmission laws.”
“By helping cryptocurrency companies comply with the letter of the law, leaders in both states are paving the way for the economic and social benefits of this new technology to flourish within their communities.”
The State of Wyoming was also complemented by the firm for recently passing its blockchain and cryptocurrency legislation after it had issues with the state before the passage of Wyoming’s guidelines. Coinbase had suspended its services to Wyoming residents for some time and the firm said at that time that the state’s Division of Banking had made Coinbase operations impractical. The state hopes to see more business operations as North Carolina and Wyoming have to change the legislative.
